When Thom Andersen’s essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself was released in 2003, the obvious joke was to suggest a sequel: Toronto Plays Everywhere Else. Just this past summer, local filmgoers thrilled to a Zanzibar cameo in the ostensibly New York City–set climax of The Incredible Hulk (there wasn’t much else to thrill to), and a sharp-eyed viewer could probably cite another half-dozen examples in the past year alone.

Hogtown plays itself in Toronto Stories, which has its world premiere next week at (where else?) the Toronto International Film Festival. “David Weaver and I shared a pint or two at The Drake at the launch party for my film Rhinoceros Eyes in 2006,” recalls Aaron Woodley, one of the film’s four writer-directors, along with Weaver, Sook-Yin Lee and Sudz Sutherland. “We talked about how we were part of the next generation of up-and-coming Toronto filmmakers and how we really needed to go out there and tell stories about the city. It’s an incredible, vibrant and highly cinematic place — and it’s also highly under-represented and misunderstood.”

“Probably more than any other city in the world, Toronto is missing from cinema,” says Weaver, no stranger to the portmanteau format after Century Hotel. “Not because lots of movies haven’t been shot here, but because it’s so often used to depict some other place.”
There’s no mistaking the locations in the quartet of narratives presented here. Woodley’s segment, which follows two kids on a fanciful (and ultimately real-world freaky) monster hunt mines Cabbagetown lore for its premise; Lee’s examination of a frustrated relationship unravels in and around Kensington; Sutherland’s tale of an ex-con struggling (and failing) to stay out of trouble ends up in a standoff in Rosedale; and Weaver’s emotionally fraught portrait of a homeless man (Gil Bellows) makes use of Union Station’s uniquely cavernous interiors. “It was important to see the whole city,” Weaver says. “And while that massively strained our budget and exhausted all of us, it was worth it.”

Equally important to all four directors was that the film showcase their individual interests (for instance, Lee’s entry pivots on sexual hang-ups, while Woodley reinforces his facility for well-integrated lo-fi visual effects) while also retaining a basic unity of tone. “I think that if one of us decided to make an experimental piece we wouldn’t have said ‘no,’” says Woodley, whose segment is the most formally adventurous. “We would have found a way to make it work, but as it turned out, we were all on similar wavelengths and the result is one movie, not four.”

Being on the same wavelength is all well and good, but generally omnibus films also require some sort of tangible connective tissue. Woodley uses the 1995 comedy Four Rooms as an example of what not to do, such as “using that annoying bellhop to connect things. We eventually came up with the idea of a child, who was brand new to the city, wandering around and coming into contact with each of our stories to varying degrees.”

Adds Weaver: “The movie begins in the immigration line at Pearson and focuses on a boy [played by Toka Murphy] who is a newcomer to the city,” adds Weaver. “That’s just the reality of Toronto. It’s a city that’s constantly reinventing itself. That’s not a cliché, it’s the actual truth about this place.”

Not that the filmmaker is claiming the final word on a city that’s large and multi-faceted enough to support 32 short films, to say nothing of four. “By no means do I think the film is the definitive movie about Toronto,” Weaver says. “In fact, nothing would please me more than to see Bruce LaBruce or Peter Lynch or Simon Ennis or any number of other filmmakers create their own Toronto stories.”